


Second Impressions

by ravenclaw_scar



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) Mid-Credits Scene, Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018) Spoilers, Hurt Scott Lang, Isolation, Quantum Realm, Sad Ending, Scott Lang Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 10:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15727797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenclaw_scar/pseuds/ravenclaw_scar
Summary: The first time, there was a blind panic to start with. Then Cassie, her voice calling out like a beacon of light. He had hoped and fought and won. He had escaped.The second time, it was all just a joke to start with. Then silence, the voices in his ear dying away to static. He searched and shouted and lost. He was trapped.





	Second Impressions

**Author's Note:**

> AMATW spoilers below, don’t read if you don’t want to be spoiled :)

The first time, there was a blind panic to start with. Then Cassie, her voice calling out like a beacon of light. He had hoped and fought and won. He had escaped.

The second time, it was all just a joke to start with. Then silence, the voices in his ear dying away to static. He searched and shouted and lost. He was trapped.

The first time, she was so loud, she could have been there with him. Her lullaby tone, a singsong lilt of childhood and innocence and desperation. He had heard her confusion, tainting the cautious calls, infecting the belief that her dad was alright. He had sensed the faltering that came with Paxton’s defensive stance, the way her face dropped when he pulled her away from the bare patch of floor with a downcast look in his eye. So much feeling, all in a single word.

The second time, it was a void. Scott couldn’t remember a time so silent. In middle school he’d gone on a trip to some caves. Down in the deepest cavern, the entire class switched their lights off. That was pitch black; not the shadows in his bedroom at night, not the gaps between streetlights on a winter’s evening. And this, this was pitch black for the ears, so silent his ear drums seemed to throb, that ringing that wasn’t there, so persistent he couldn’t help but chase it desperately. He could feel himself falling without truly being anywhere. It was a vacuum, without walls or up and down, no concept of time or space or any tangible dimension. It was loss and disorientation. So little, filling every crevice.

The first time, he had something to focus on. It was a dying whisper, but sound nonetheless. It was a pinprick of light in the deep black of nothing, but it was visible. He still had his wits about him, he still had the ability to move his hands, to grasp that final blue disc. They’d shaken, fumbling with the tiny lifeline as the lack of gravity threatened to condemn him to a life of nothing. That click as it fell into place in the regulator and the blue light that glowed softly; he’d seen that, he’d heard it. Home was a button away.

The second time, the static that finally crackled from the headset was no companion. It was so monotonous and like everything repetitive died away into background noise within minutes. Or maybe it wasn’t minutes. It could have been hours or days or years and Scott would still be there. He was angry, all of a sudden. Sick to his stomach and overcome with the urge to punch and kick and scream. But there was nothing to hit and the disembodied voice that echoed around his helmet was so unlike his own that he stopped. He couldn’t feel, but he yearned for the sensation of touch to return. He wanted to rub his hands together, to feel skin against his own. He wanted to ruffle Cassie’s hair, to lean his forehead against Hope’s. He wanted to punch Hank’s shoulder when he was sure there was space to duck away almost instantly. That was home now. Home was too far. Home was a reality away.

The first time, he’d forgotten. It had taken an entanglement fuelled dream to remind him of the endless fractals and kaleidoscope colours. It had taken a nightmare to relive that void.

The second time, he couldn’t imagine forgetting. The void lasted for as long as it did. He tried to count the seconds for a while, forcing himself to talk out loud, to fill the space with something familiar. He reached 200 and something before he lost count, halfway between four minutes and infinity. It was when the numbers lost meaning that Scott gave up starting over. But finally his legs met something firm and he sprawled across an endless plain. He recognised it from Janet’s stories and disliked the feeling of discomfort that came with familiarity.

Hank had been there too but paled slightly at any mention of it. He’d been lost on his search for Janet and stumbled there by accident. She’d helped him escape, but there was no one there to help Scott.

The voices began softly, coming from nowhere but rebounding throughout the suit in an echo chamber of uneasiness. And she was back, just like the first time. Cassie, the voice of a child who’s trying to comprehend a world so much bigger and scarier than they are. Confusion became fear and then anger that Scott had never heard from his daughter.

_You left me. You hurt me. You laughed at me when I asked to be your partner._

Scott’s hands moved automatically to hit against the sides of his helmet in a search for his ears. He tried to cover them, to find relief in an endless cavern of mistakes and regrets. He tried to erase every wrongdoing by tuning out the infinite loop. He wept unashamedly and breathed until the glass of the helmet was foggy and blurred with heavy exhalations.

_I wouldn’t want you to be my partner anyway. Did you ever thing you were good enough for me?_

Hope appeared amongst lost breaths and shaking hands. Scott had found the floor with his knees and knelt with his head in his hands. His finger played with the deactivation switch of his helmet almost daringly. The effects of the quantum realm on the human body? Who knew. Maybe he was desperate enough to find out. Maybe the permanent relief would do his aching head some good.

_I looked after you in prison, Scotty. I had your back; when have you ever had mine?_

Luis didn’t suit anger, Scott registered numbly. He never raised his voice anyway, maintaining a generally loud tone in every situation. But the fire behind his words, the disappointment and bitterness just didn’t sit right. Scott tried to picture Luis shouting at him but his mind was as blank as the void and fading out of reach. His fingers found the switch and pushed.

_You were right, Scott. You’re expendable. You’re a tool, that’s all. I didn’t choose you, I needed you._

Hank’s voice continued. Just like Scott’s breathing and his rapidly pounding heart. There was an indescribable sound filling the quantum realm, muffled by the suit but fully audible as the helmet fell away. It was a distant humming almost, but nothing in the real world compared to it. Scott tried to phase it out, but like the voices, it returned.

Finally he opened tightly clenched eyes and found himself in an empty house. Maggie’s house. Their house. It was silent, that eerie lack of anything returning to settle in his ears. He walked cautiously with carefully planted feet. There was a familiar door, painted in a light cream in preparation for the baby. He opened the door to the nursery as he had on many sleepless nights. He leant in the doorway and stared at the empty cradle, his head devoid of the thoughts of his younger self, lacking that new parent fear, that insistence that the child would end up too much like him and not enough like Maggie.

“You’ll need your sleep for when she arrives,” Maggie said from behind him. Scott glanced back but the presence was gone.

“Daddy! Come back.” Again, his head whipped around to the empty nursery. It was still empty. The mobile above the bed swung steadily on an unspoken breeze but otherwise, the room was still.

“We would never have had this,” Hope told him from the opposite wall. She perched on the windowsill, resting her back against the cushions that lined the narrow seat. “I wouldn’t have made the same mistake.”

“Mistake?” Scott found his voice, raw but his own. Hope finally made eye contact, fixing him with a sharp glance.

“Being left alone to bring up a kid by myself?” she continued, “No, thank you.”

“I wouldn’t leave,” Scott mumbled, taken aback. It was just the quantum realm, he told himself firmly. It was just the sadistic place designed to mess with his messed up head.

“Like you didn’t go to Germany?” Hank chimed in from the cradle, spinning the mobile with one hand. It was like the first day back in the lab all over again; he glanced over to see Scott and looked away, disappointment written in his eyes.

And then the landscape returned, the hostile, foreign world filling his senses once more. The voices died away and Scott breathed deeply, resting his forehead into the dusty floor, his diaphragm rippling in an empty spasm against his chest. He expected the sand to feel hot, like a desert, but instead he felt nothing. There was no temperature anywhere, just a Goldilocks zone of mediocre.

He didn’t expect the relief to last long. He began to crawl a few steps, only to turn back to survey behind him. There was nothing, no landmark to stop him walking in circles. No signpost to guide the way to somewhere better, no hint of a tourist information office. And it wasn’t as if there was life. No, down there, he was alone, secluded, isolated, disconnected.

He listened to the static in the earpiece at the end of every cycle. When the voices died away and the hallucinations retreated. He listened for a single word of reassurance to remind him that the voices he continued to hear had once been friendly. He tried to remember Luis as the happiest convict he’d ever met, he tried to remember Hope and Hank as the bickering father-daughter combo that had lightened his day on so many occasions. And he held onto the memory of a smiling, laughing, relentlessly cheerful Cassie.

He tested the connection every time. Even as he knew he was talking to static. Even when he was sure he was alone on that rooftop with nothing but a van for company; when the world had gone quiet, or at least his world had. He listened and spoke, first with clear, concise intent and later with broken, whispered uncertainty. 

He spoke. He listened. He lost.

The first time, he came back.

The second? Maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I’ve watched it twice now :)
> 
> There are so many great Scott in the quantum realm fics already, but not enough so I thought I’d add my own to the mix!
> 
> I’ve had writer's block on my other two stories for a while so I thought I’d go for a one shot this time. It’s not very story based, more just a drabble of general feelings that I had after the film. The thing is, if I start writing anything with a plot, it will turn into chapters of story and I don’t want to speculate about avengers 4 too much just yet.
> 
> In terms of amatw, I really enjoyed it. It’s a shame no one seems to be talking about it too positively. It was just as funny as the first and in no way a let down in terms of being a sequel. The acting was good, the action was good and I loved all of the extra shrinking of objects! I saw a review that was disappointed with the resolution with Ghost and the defeating of the 'villain' but I thought it was really original. Films nowadays end with a massive fight scene and the villain gets killed or arrested and the hero wins for defeating someone (except infinity war :p ). It was nice to see a formula break, and amatw is the perfect parody-esque film to do it in. I feel really bad for Scott though because if everyone who went in the snap is somewhere together or just not really aware, he’s probably in the worst situation. He doesn’t know what’s happening and he’s completely alone. I also really want to know what happened to Cassie in the snap!!


End file.
